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Not sure why this book, a novella originally given away for free during Book Week in 2008, has such low ratings. It was my second Bernlef, after his classic Hersenschimmen, which I read last year and admired a great deal. This book doesn't quite rise to the same level (it's only an 84-page tale, after all), but I still found it an extremely enjoyable read, written in a very clear, straightforward, easy style (I'm not a native speaker of Dutch and only started reading the language a year ago).

For such a short book, it packs a lot in it. It's a sort of coming-of-age tale about Thomas, the son of rural parents in the North of Holland, people who speak little and only when necessary. As a consequence, Thomas does not begin speaking until he's 4 and ever afterward tends to prefer silence to speech. At 18 he runs away from home to Amsterdam, where he meets a girl and falls in love (sort of, in a platonic way) and thence to Paris, having his first homosexual experience en route, and later to England, where his friend ditches him, and because of his refusal to speak he ends up in a psychiatric hospital. There, he acquires a sort of worldwide renown as 'the pianoman', a mysterious young man who refuses to speak but plays the piano beautifully.

It's a nice story, extremely pleasant reading. It also makes me interested to check out more of Bernlef's books.

Read information about the author

Bernlef (previously J. Bernlef) is the pseudonym of Dutch writer, poet, and translator Hendrik Jan Marsman. He occasionally used the nom de plume: Henk Bernlef.

Between 1959 and 2012 Bernlef wrote a large amount of novels, stories and poems. Amongst others he recieved the Constantijn Huygens prijs (1984), the AKO Literatuurprijs (1987) and the PC Hooftprijs (1994). His work is characterized by a sober language and an unflagging fascination with the workings of the human memory. His most famous novel is Hersenschimmen (1984) and describes the process of dementia from the point of view of the sufferer, Maarten Klein. (Source: de Volkskrant 29/10/2012)